Daily Times

The debate concerning the death penalty has ignited once again amongst the legal fraternity of countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty from their criminal justice systems. The debate sparked following the intellectual discourse of the Indian Supreme Court’s (SC’s) judges while reacting to the demand from a section of legal experts for the abolition of the death penalty after the Mumbai serial blasts’ convict desperately tried to avoid the gallows. While dealing with the petitions of five convicts from Chhattisgarh challenging their conviction for murder, the august Indian SC asked whether life imprisonment could be truncated through remission if the death penalty was done away with.

The Indian SC bench comprising of honourable Justices T S Thakur and V Gopala Gowda said, “Today, there is a movement against the death penalty. They say that instead of hanging a condemned prisoner put him in jail for his entire life.” In the opinion of the writer, the argument advanced by the Indian judges seems to be reasonable and has the substance of sensible thinking. The judges further observed whether the death sentence and limiting a life term to 14 years could co-exist. Most of the prisoners sentenced to life get out of jail after serving 14 years as the government remits the rest of the sentence. Due to this remittance the general public gets an impression that life imprisonment is only for 14 years. It is said that the observation of honourable Justices T S Thakur and V Gopala Gowda will have affects on any future debate concerning the death penalty and could well be taken note by another bench dealing with the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

The debate started by the Indian SC may attract the attention of the legal fraternity and the judges of the apex courts of Pakistan. In the writer’s candid view, very few people actually oppose the death penalty in Pakistan and even great legal minds are obliged to support the death penalty in Pakistan. The superior courts in Pakistan are reluctant to withhold the decision of the trial courts concerning the death sentence. The ratio of award of the death sentence by trial courts in Pakistan is much higher and is due to the trial courts’ very liberal approach to the death sentence. This is just like in Indian trial courts. This is because trial courts pay higher consideration to irrelevant factors and proximity of the scene of the crime in terms of occurrence and distance. On the other hand, the higher courts pay more attention to connecting circumstances, mitigating circumstances and overall look of a crime scene while pronouncing their judgments. It is time we focused on the manner in which trial courts are administering the death penalty so that the misuse of it in the trial courts can be restrained. The superior courts, especially the high courts, of Pakistan have always tended to convert the death sentences into life imprisonment if any reasonable lacuna is found in the trial court’s findings and decision.

In the wake of the Peshawar massacre that took countless innocent lives last year the government decided to lift the moratorium on the death penalty after taking all stakeholders on board. The last PPP-led coalition government had placed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2008 following enormous international pressure, especially from the EU. The current government last year presented a number of reasons for lifting the ban upon the death penalty. One of the reasons was the punishment of terrorists who had been involved in heinous activities. To date, more than 200 convicts have been hanged in Pakistan since 2014; out of those hanged, not a single convict had been sentenced to death for terrorist activity. Those who have been hanged in Pakistan since 2014 were murder convicts. When the government prepared a case for reinstatement of the death penalty in 2014, it gave a firm impression that terrorist activities would decrease across Pakistan because of the reinstatement as the terrorists would curtail their activities, knowing that if they are caught they will be hanged without any mercy.

I contend that the death penalty undermines human dignity. All the leading nations of Europe, except Belarus, abolished the death penalty years ago and have moved towards non-penal social engineering schemes. Pakistan should also adopt same sort of similar scheme instead of putting convicts in jail for years. It is further submitted that abolition of the death penalty is a need of the times and that the legal fraternity should prepare a case for life imprisonment for entire life as has been discussed by the learned judges of the Indian SC. The writer believes that hanging convicts does not decrease crime rate in Pakistan at all. The writer lastly concludes with the advantages of life imprisonment: if a person commits a mistake that has a deep impact on the victim or victim’s family then life imprisonment is an appropriate punishment. Capital punishment takes the life of a person, which is not real justice for any crime. Life imprisonment gives a chance to criminals to realise their mistakes.

The writer is a practising criminal law advocate of the High Court. He can be reached at greenlaw123@hotmail.com